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Importance Of Environmental Ethics
Duty ethics vs virtue ethics
Environmental ethics
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Recommended: Importance Of Environmental Ethics
A good ethical theory requires both logical rigor and intuitive appeal to provide an effective tool for understanding what is right and what is wrong. In the field of environmental ethics, there has been significant scholarship in developing a duty ethics based on the inherent value of nature, most notably by Paul Taylor. Taylor indeed provides a logically clear argument for protecting the environment by building on the principles he calls the biocentric outlook (Taylor, 99). While this scholarship has been helpful in offering an explanation for what those who value the environment intuitively recognize, some have noticed that it does not provide positive answers to how we should live (Cafaro, 31). Virtue ethicists, on the other hand, have specifically addressed this question (Sandler, 6), and the result is a very accessible theory that harks back to the classic naturalists like Thoreau (Cafaro). Environmental virtue ethics has its own problems, however; sometimes seems that virtue ethicists are valuing human “flourishing” or “experiences of wonder” before the natural environment they’re claiming to uphold (Rolston, 70). This paper attempts to provide a framework for addressing this critique of environmental virtue ethics by defining the limitations of normative ethical systems and outlining guidelines for environmental virtues as well as some of the advantages a system of virtue ethics has over other ethical approaches.
Ethical Systems
In order to discuss a system of environmental virtue ethics, it is necessary to determine what we mean when we speak of an ethical system. Ethics is a “branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong.” (Britan...
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...ædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 9 Apr. 2007 .
Holmes Rolston III, “Environmental Virtue Ethics: Half the Truth, but Dangerous as a Whole”, Environmental Virtue Ethics, pp. 61-78 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005)
Ronald Sandler, “Introduction: Environmental Virtue Ethics”, Environmental Virtue Ethics, pp. 1-12 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005)
Ronald Sandler, “A Virtue Ethics Perspective on Genetically Modified Crops”, Environmental Virtue Ethics, pp. 215-242 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005)
Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)
Peter Wenz, “Synergistic Environmental Virtues: Consumerism and Human Flourishing”, Environmental Virtue Ethics, pp. 197-213, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005)
Kohak, Erazim V. "Part II." The Green Halo: a Bird's-eye View of Ecological Ethics. Chicago,
The book is often cited as an environmental classic - of which there can be little doubt - but it is also said by some to have largely triggered the modern environmental movement. Its warning about the dangers of
Everybody knows that to have a good social life one needs to have good ethics, but what about using those ethics in the natural environment. Many people tend to say that they are well-educated, with a high use of ethics, but it seems useless in the real world. Society needs to start to worry about the environment and not only about what one wants or need. Aldo Leopold describe how ethics in an ecological and philosophical view today needs to changed to have a good use of them. Leopold was one of the founders of the Wilderness society. At the same time, he initiated the first Forest Wilderness Area in the United States. This two are just some of the societies and jobs in which he was involved that have to do with the natural environment. During
Thiroux, J. P., & Krasemann, K. W. (2009). Ethics: Theory and practice (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Boss, Judith A. Ethics for Life: A Text with Readings. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 2001. Print.
Zsolnai, L. (2011). Environmental ethics for business sustainability. International Journal of Social Economics, 38(11), 892-899. doi: 10.1108/03068291111171397
Louden, Robert B. "On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics." American Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (1984): 227-36.
Nordhaus, Ted, and Michael Shellenberger. Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.
Thiroux, Jacques P., and Keith W. Krasemann. Ethics: Theory and Practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.
Levin, Mark R.. "On Enviro-statism." Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. New York: Threshold Editions, 2009. 137. Print.
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
Boss, J. A. (2014). Ethics for Life (Sixth ed., pp. 252-255). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Hursthouse, R. (2003, July 18). Virtue Ethics. Stanford University. Retrieved March 6, 2014, from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/ethics-virtue
In his essay, The Ethics of Respect for Nature, Paul Taylor presents his argument for a deontological, biocentric egalitarian attitude toward nature based on the conviction that all living things possess equal intrinsic value and are worthy of the same moral consideration. Taylor offers four main premises to support his position. (1) Humans are members of the “Earth’s community of life” in the same capacity that nonhuman members are. (2) All species exist as a “complex web of interconnected elements” which are dependent upon one another for their well-being. (3) Individual organisms are “teleological centers of life” which possess a good of their own and a unique way in which to pursue it. (4) The concept that humans are superior to other species is an unsupported anthropocentric bias.
Ecological theories and environmental ethics are reciprocally and dynamically linked. Inquiry into this thesis can provide epistemological and ethical insights for ecologists and environmental philosophers. First, for ecologists it clarifies that environmental ethics is not purely a normative corpus that we should adopt under the pressure of an environmental crisis. Ethical conceptions participate in the genesis and evaluation of ecological theories. Second, environmental philosophers have tended to focus on how ecological sciences could inform environmental ethics. I emphasize, in turn, that it is valuable to analyze and to discuss how ethical conceptions can and do inform ecological sciences.